


At the End

by notsocoolio



Series: Zombiestuck [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen, One Shot, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23780527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsocoolio/pseuds/notsocoolio
Summary: A look into Dave, John, Jade, and Rose's lives in the apocalypse.
Series: Zombiestuck [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021740
Kudos: 14





	At the End

**Author's Note:**

> Was written for the AUstuck zine on the Homestuck Artists Discord.

Today’s the day, isn’t it? You’re leaving home, finally giving up on your stupid hopes of Bro coming back. 

You’re leaving safety, for some stupid reason you can’t fathom. 

But choosing between starving to death, sitting in the safety of your apartment, waiting for Bro to ever return, and leaving only to die out on the streets filled with the undead isn’t much of a choice. And you’ve already chosen your path. 

Today is, in fact, the day. You’re leaving. 

There’s nothing left to dwell on, nothing left for you to do or think about, and yet you do. 

The apartment is safe, but cold. It’s empty, at least of anything truly useful, but there is a soft bed. There’s still your brother’s stuff, all the things that still smell like him despite it being months since he last touched them. There’s his bed, which you’ve slept in too many times for it to truly smell anything like him, or even to bring you comfort, but at least you can fake it. 

Your camera is here. There’s no good pictures to take anymore, especially since you’re out of film, but pretending is always at the very least a comfort to you. Same goes for your mixing equipment, your electric guitar, and all of your full sketchbooks and tiny pencils. You miss having things to do. 

Even the crows are gone. 

At this point, all you’ve done for the last couple of months since you developed all of your film, filled your last sketchbook, and watched the final crow die, was sit in a chair by the window and watch as the sun rose over your apartment. Sometimes you’d peer out of it to look at the city below, or sit on the fire escape—sometimes dangerously close to streets—and watch as the undead did their thing. You used to take photos of it but you’ve been out of film for months now. 

Sometimes you’d think back to your friends. You’d think about the days when the power still worked somehow and you’d message them, worried for their safety but covering it in layers of irony. You used to think acting normal might at the very least make them feel better. Now you worry it might’ve made them complacent, that you’d lulled them into a false sense of security. 

They all lived farther from civilization than you do, even John, who lived in a suburb, and they all lived farther from where it all started. But you live right next to the fucking place. 

Your city never had a chance, but somehow you’re still alive alive, sitting in wait in your apartment, watching the dead that used to be your people wander through what used to be your city. 

Rose, John, and especially Jade lived almost as far from the origin of it as possible. Rose and John both lived far up north, while Jade lived with her family on a deserted island in the Pacific. At the time your power finally went out, none of them were dead or bit, and Jade had never even seen an undead. 

Now they’re probably dead, and everyday you’ve sat and worried that it was your fault. That you, one of the only southern survivors, didn’t warn them. 

You never had enough doubt in them to really believe they were dead, but you couldn’t help blaming yourself at the thought that they were. They might even still be alive, and some part of you truly believes they are. Yet you still find it in you to blame yourself for their deaths. Your self hatred is showing, Dave. 

But thinking only wastes time, as does blaming, and you have a bag to pack, and an apartment to leave. 

There’s little that’s of use in your apartment, so you take what you can. A full water bottle, a change of clothes, a jacket, your last granola bar, and a can of soup. You always have your katana, so that’s barely worth mentioning, and you tuck your Bro’s swiss army knife into your pocket. 

You wish you had more that was useful, but alas, you are without belongings of use in the apocalypse. A rope might be useful, at least, but you don’t even have that. You’re honestly not even sure if that’s something a normal household would have, but you and your Bro were never normal, so you have no point of reference. 

After your bag is packed, you almost slip out of the apartment with no fanfare or brooding, but you catch the sight of Lil Cal. 

His plastic eyes bore into you, almost begging you to take him with you, but you never liked that fucking thing anyway.

You slam the door in his face, feeling triumphant for the first time since everyone around you died. 

* * *

For the first time since the apocalypse has started, your dad is finally letting you out of the house. A month ago, they finished working on the wall around the neighborhood, and about a week ago, they finished the final sweep of the place for corpses. But your dad still wouldn’t let you out of the house. 

Most kids in your neighborhood weren’t allowed out. You’ve been calling your neighborhood friends on the landline for months but your dad has never let you step foot outside, until now. 

Today is your neighbor’s birthday, and your dad thought you might be up for the task of bringing your neighbor his birthday cake. Of course the first time he let you outside would be for a chore.

He gave you a note before you left, just so you wouldn’t get distracted or forget on the way there what you were doing. Knowing you, it wasn’t likely to work, but there also shouldn’t be too many people out to distract you. 

You are also, despite all of your whining and wishes to go outside, scared absolutely shitless of going outside.

You slip out the front door, and start to make your way down the street, cautiously checking everywhere and gripping your hammer tightly. You were instructed to never leave the house without a weapon months ago, even though your dad had no plans of letting you letting you outside anytime soon.

You wave at one of your neighbors when you see them through their window. No one’s out on the street. It’s empty, and you start to wonder if this fear and discomfort is something like what Dave must feel, out there all alone. You haven’t spoken to him for months, ever since his power presumably went out. Yours still works, since the neighborhood has run on solar power for many years now, a boasting point for your town. At least, when it still was a town.

You turn the corner, sticking to the side of the road. There are no cars out, but you can never be too safe, you think. You’re honestly not even sure why anyone would be driving a car, if they even still had gas, but it’s a habit deeply ingrained in you.

You finally spot the house, just a bit down the street. It’s white and has a lot of windows. It’s no different from any other house, but right now it sticks out like a beacon of safety.

You feel relieved as you make your way up to the porch, set your hammer down, and knock on the door.

No answer.

“Mr. Elliot?”

Silence.

You try the doorknob. You can at least try to leave it on the counter with a note.

It’s open.

You walk in, and take a relieved breath. You feel much better inside. You set the cake down on the table by the door.

“Mr. Elliot? My dad made you a cake!”

A little shuffling from the kitchen.

“Well, uh, happy birthday Mr. Elliot! Um. Why aren’t you answering? I can hear you, you know.”

You giggle a little. He’s probably messing with you. Jokes on him, you’re the pranking master.

There’s a loud bang from the kitchen.

You jump, “Mr. Elliot?!”

The banging continues.

You step further into the hallway, making sure to take off your shoes and leave them by the door, along with your hammer.

Your heart thumps as you make your way to the kitchen. You can hardly hear anything over the loud banging from the kitchen. You can’t help but think that this probably isn’t a joke. You force yourself to think otherwise.

As you step into the kitchen, you find that the sound is coming from the bathroom off the kitchen. Your house has one just like it. 

Dad always said it was in a weird spot.

“Mr. Elliot, this isn’t—“

The door slams open, and Mr. Elliot comes crashing out, falling over himself in a tangle of limbs.

He’s snarling and growling, snapping his teeth like a wild dog.

You take a step back. You can see the bloody bite on his neck, and your heart stops.

He lunges at you. 

You scream, throwing yourself to the side, trying to run back down the hall towards the door, away from the snarling corpse of your neighbor.

He grabs one of your legs and you fall in a heap, trying to kick him off of you and get up again. He just grabs at you, opening his mouth, rotten teeth snapping, trying to take a bite.

“No!” you scream, flipping it over, trying to hold his face back, keep his teeth away from you.

He pulls himself up further, pressing his rotting body over you, trying to pin you down for a better bite.

You try to hold him back, but you can’t, your stomach retching and body recoiling from the rancid smell of his rotting flesh.

“Stop, please!” you scream, desperate.

You scream for help, you don’t know what to do, you can’t keep this up, he can’t be  _ dead _ . It’s one bite! 

You can’t kill a man! you think. 

But it's not a man anymore, your instincts tell you as your free hand starts to scramble for anything to hit it with.

You can’t kill someone, you think as you shove it away, grasping for the hammer you left at the door.

This isn’t a person, you think.

This used to be your neighbor. It’s not anymore.

It’s nothing but a corpse, devoid of morals, devoid of life. It will stop at nothing to kill you.

So you kill it. You swing the hammer at the corpse’s head as hard as you can.

Its body crashes into the wall, but it pauses, as if stunned, for long enough that you’re able to get to your feet before it’s reaching towards you again.

You stomp on its chest, restricting its movement. Your mind is blank, filled with only adrenaline screaming at you to kill it, kill it, kill it!

You flip the hammer around in your hand, slamming it into the zombie’s head, the claw crashing into its skull, bone shattering under your hand. Blood and bits of brain splatter everywhere.

You stop to breath.

It twitches.

You slam the hammer into its head again, making the mess only bigger, but this time you’re sure it's dead.

You’re panting, trying to breathe, but your instincts are telling you that it isn’t dead--that you have to kill it! But you know, logically, that it is dead, as you stare into what’s left of its face.

This is what the world has to offer now.

The adrenaline leaves your body slowly, and you fall to your knees.

You sit there, staring blankly at the corpse, just breathing, until the door opens.

It’s your dad. He gasps, taking in the carnage around you, the sight of you, covered in stinking, rotten blood, just sitting there and staring at him, shaking with what’s left of your adrenaline and the trauma of what happened.

Your dad walks up to you, slowly. Almost as if he was scared of you. You wouldn’t blame him.

“John…” he has that voice, the one that he uses when he’s worried about you, like that time you broke your wrist, or maybe closer to that time he had to tell you why you’d never see your mom again.

Your face feels wet.

You aren’t talking, but when you open your mouth and try, it doesn’t work. All that comes out is a choked sob.

He falls to his knees, and grasps you, holding you close.

You freak out for a moment, feeling the ghost sensation of the corpse over your body again before you remember that it’s dead. 

You lean into him, comforted by his warmth, completely different from the cold, dead grasp of the corpse. 

His shoulder’s soaking wet by the time you stop crying, and by then he’d already carried you all the way home.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It really is a nice day today.

You are at the moment enjoying the sunshine on an island you and your family call your own.

The other day, or maybe more like a few months ago, the apocalypse started. Not much has changed on the island, except that your supply shipments went sparse for a while, and then stopped altogether. You’ve been hungry lately, but your greenhouse works out just as well as those shipments did, so who really cares?

Your grandpa does. He wants to leave the island, find the men who were supposed to be delivering food, and bring it home himself. All of it. 

You don’t really think that’ll work, but you would rather go with him, at the very least. But he insists that you stay home.

Today is the day of his departure. It’s been making the day a little less nice for you than the good weather has, but you try to cheer up despite it.

Your grandfather is a man of adventure. He will make it back within the week, just like he’s been promising, and you’re sure of it.

But something about the situation has been niggling in the back of your mind, and you’re usually right about these things. The bad feelings you get, the little premonitions of things, are usually right.

You don’t want to think of that, though. Of what that might mean for you and your grandpa.

You open your eyes. Take in the sights of the island.

Bec lays beside you, as he always does. He’s curled up, enjoying the sun as much as you are.

You giggle a bit and scratch behind his ear, which is his favorite spot to be scratched. 

He pushes into your palm, and makes a kind of purring sound, like a cat. You laugh. Bec is very good at making you feel better.

You look around, absently petting his head and enjoying the sight of the ocean glistening in the sun and the sand baking under the sun below you.

On the far side of the island, you can just barely see the cove and frog ruins from your little perch on the hill. The jungle stretches out from it, leading out behind you. Birds chirp from inside the trees, and your tower sticks out from the middle of it.

You really love this island. Everywhere else the world is dead and desolate, but here it is safe and beautiful. Before the apocalypse you used to be lonely, but knowing about the world’s situation only makes you more grateful for your adventurous grandfather.

Oh no, you’re thinking about him again. The bad feeling pools in your stomach. You want to tell him not to go, but you aren’t sure how to.

Bec’s fur bristles underneath your hand, and you turn back to him. He sits up, and sniffs the air. 

He seems to agree with you. Or at least that’s what you think he means. 

Then he starts to bark, and gets up to run over to the beach, where a recently clear patch of sand is now marred by the sight of a corpse.

“Oh, gosh!” you yell.

You are so lucky you brought your pistol with you. You wrench it from your skirt’s pocket as you start to run.

“Oh, fuck!” you hiss as you sprint down the hill to the body.

Bec keeps barking, having stopped a safe distance from the body, looking ready to pounce on it as you approach. The corpse starts to push itself up.

“Bec, get the heck away from that thing!” you warn.

You stop in front of the corpse and aim your pistol at the back of its head as it tries to push its bloated, rotting body up.

You pull the trigger.

Blood and brain spurts everywhere, all over your outdoor clothes and onto Bec’s coat.

You groan, “Motherfucker!”

The smell of it is truly rancid, and now it covers your clothes, assaulting your senses with the smell of decay and rot. Not only that, it covers Bec, too, who will try to cover your bed with it tonight. You’ll have to give him a bath, which is always a daunting task. 

Forgetting that for the moment, you pull the body onto shore, gagging again at the smell of rotten flesh, only amplified by the sensation of it in your hands. You make a mental note to burn it later. 

Though, you’ll probably forget, so you dig around in your pockets for a bit before pulling out a red elastic band.

You snap the elastic onto your middle finger, and look up cautiously. Bec has calmed down, but one zombie sometimes meant two or three later, and you don’t know how long this one had been here before Bec or you had noticed. 

You could have been sitting up on that hill for hours without noticing, and Bec wasn’t all that good of a hunting dog. He usually got distracted, or only noticed things at the last moment.

Honestly, just like you, your dog seemed to sleep a lot―he liked to lick his fur, be pet, and lay around. He was lazy just like a cat, and yet he was still stupid and loyal like a dog. But a majority of the time he was utterly useless.

You love him anyway. And he was a big help in other, more important ways, like keeping you company. 

You look down at him, ready to scratch his favorite spot again, only to notice him missing. He liked to do that a lot, too.

You spot him up the hill, bugging your grandfather who was shambling his way down to you. It was probably almost time for him to go. 

You trail up the hill hesitantly, and he looks away from Bec long enough to notice you, and starts to wave you over excitedly. 

“It’s time for me to go, chap!” he says.

You can’t help but pout a little at that, and he chuckles. 

“I know you don’t want me to go, darling, but I have’ta! We need that food!”

“I have my garden, and the forest is full of things to eat! We live right next to the ocean, too! And you know how to fish! There’s no reason for you to go.”   
  


He sighs, but still smiles, “If you’re gonna miss me so much, you coulda just said so, you know.”

You pout even more, and he just grins wider, opening his arms. 

“Come ‘ere!”

You glare at him, but end up crashing into his embrace anyhow, clutching his shirt, and trying not to cry. 

He presses his nose to your hair, and mumbles into the curly mess, “I know it’s dangerous for me to go, and I know that I might not make it back. But I’m an adventurer! And I’m old. This island isn’t enough for me, or you. We need more supplies than this island can sustain, especially your medications.”   
  


He breathes deep, and starts to card his fingers through your tangled, curly hair. 

“I worry about your insulin everyday, and I know we have a ton of it, but―” he stops, and then breathes again, “I need to bring it back, so we can last here for as long as possible.” 

Honestly, his argument’s going sort of dry. There’s a lot of flaws with his plans, and you’re starting to think your grandfather might just be too cooped up on the island. Sure, your insulin might run out. But people before medications lived with diabetes, right? Life would suck for awhile, but you’d get used to it. Maybe. 

You’re actually starting to think you could get the man to stay, if you argued enough. But at this point, you aren’t sure what that would really do. Just put it off for a few months before either of you  _ really  _ ends up needing something? Or until he just decides to go again in another month? 

He really could just take off before you manage to persuade him. His argument may be defunct, but he was a stubborn old man. He would probably take a lot of talking to, and only Dave could talk that much in such a short amount of time. Maybe Rose, too. 

Your grandfather leans back out of the embrace, kisses your forehead, and then steps back completely, resting a hand on Bec’s head, who hadn’t left either of your sides the whole time. 

“I need to go now. Before it gets dark, or else I might just end up staying!” he chuckles. 

You nod, and walk him to the cove, where he departs, waving at you the whole way out of the pier before you can’t see his figure anymore. 

* * *

It’s dark in the bunker, no different from usual. A cacophony of shuffling feet reverberates off of the metal walls of the bunker’s main room in which you sit.

A single light snaps on, filling the room with the bright light of your flashlight, held in your mother's hand as she creeps quietly down the stairs in an attempt not to wake you. It seems she is too drunk to notice how a light might have that same effect. Or maybe just too drunk to care.

She stumbles on the last step, effectively dashing any chance of you still hoping she might be sober. You sit up in your cot, preparing yourself for an encounter you were hoping to sleep away.

Your mother notices your movement, gasping a bit before chuckling quietly to herself, mumbling an offhand, “You always were a light sleeper,” that you were likely not supposed to hear.

“Why speak of me in the past tense, mother? Are you planning on abandoning me here, perhaps? Or maybe you were thinking of murdering me in my sleep in order to stretch out the last of the alcohol for yourself?”

Your mother seems almost offended as she slowly takes in what you just said. Your joking inquiry may have been a bit cruel, but your mother always appreciated you joking with her, whether or not it was morbid or cruel.

You hesitate, waiting for her to speak, or even joke back, but when she doesn’t, you ask, “Mother?”

She seems to snap out of whatever thought she trailed off into, while she was staring at you. “Yes, Rosie?”

She seems more absent than drunk, you note, “Why are you back so late? You’re usually home for dinner.”

She winces, and then attempts to cover it with a placating smile, “It’s nothing, Rosie, you should go back to bed. I’ll tuck you in in just a moment.”

You aren’t sure whether or not she’s serious, though knowing your insufferable mother she likely is. But she doesn’t even give you a chance to respond before she turns around to walk towards the bathroom.

She’s limping a bit as she walks but you think nothing of it, remembering the many times she’d come back from the outside with bruises and cuts all over. Despite your worry, she never gets bit. She’s been out enough times to prove that to you. So instead of worrying like you usually might’ve, tonight you drift back to sleep, like she’d never come home at all.

  
  
  


By morning, though, she’s gone.

A letter sits on the table beside your reading chair. The flashlight she’d used the night before lay next to the sullen words, as if left there to lighten the mood left behind by your mother’s letter.

The letter is written hastily, her usually pristine cursive sloppy and almost illegible, the edge of the paper tainted by bloody fingerprints and the smell of alcohol.

You can’t comprehend what this letter has left you with. You collapse into your reading chair, left in shock of the last thing your mother would ever write.

She’d been bitten last night. She’d made an attempt to patch it up, but she hadn’t wanted to risk you. She left in the early hours of the morning.

You can almost feel the ghost of her lips on your forehead, a regular occurrence as she left the bunker to sweep the area for whatever you could still use. You’d ignored it in favor of catching a few more hours of sleep. 

You hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.

Salty tears drip down your cheeks and stain what little of the note wasn’t already marred by your mother’s haste and condition. 


End file.
